“Our home is in Oregon,” Knight groused as he started rubbing his eyes.

Like he could erase the gold.

Dumbass.

At least Grace had one smart mate. I was reserving judgment on Daniel, because A, I didn’t know him, and B, I couldn’t decide whether he was smart or stupid for going into hiding after what had happened to Seth. As for Knight, he kept proving himself to be a dumb jock with a great knack at bringing people back to life.

Okay, so I knew I sounded ungrateful considering I was one of the kids he’d managed to restore to life, but that didn’t mean he was Einstein either.

“Our spiritual home is here,” she said softly, breaking into my internal diatribe about how the Mother was never wrong, and couldn’t possibly have made a mistake when she set Grace up with Knight and Daniel as well as me.

Most things Grace did, I’d admit, to finding interesting.

She was one of the most fascinating people I knew, which was totally the budding mate bond talking, but when she did the weird stuff that was a habit for her, well, her fascination points just soared.

If I could have read her like a book, I’d have died a happy man. As it stood, she was a story I was incapable of predicting the outcome for.

See? Fascinating.

“Who are you?” I asked softly, the question not only borne out of instinct, but housed in the knowledge that despite her lack of predictability, I knew Grace. Inside and out. And this wasn’t her.

A twinkle gleamed in her eyes, one that was anything but human. And while we weren’t human, not fully, it wasn’t supernatural either.

“Clever, child. Clever. Not simply from your kumiho either.” She bathed me in a smile that was like the one on the Mona Lisa—somehow all-knowing, kind, yet bored.

“What are you talking about?” Knight grumbled. “It’s Grace.”

I cut him a look. “She’s not Grace, and, dumbass,” I muttered under my breath, “she just confirmed it.”

He shook his head. “She’s teasing.”

“No, I’m not,” Grace intoned calmly.

“Who are you then?” Knight queried, his unease evident now.

Grace surprised us both by sweeping low into a curtsy. “I have many names, but one you’ll recognize from your mothers’ past is Kali Sara.”

Both of us tensed, and there was no denying that I was as stunned as my cousin. “What? That’s impossible? She’s a Catholic saint!” I retorted, taking a step back just as Knight stumbled backward too.

“There is no need to fear,” she murmured, just as she pulled a freaky ass move that had fog gathering around us. Fog so thick that it reminded me of a really old flick I’d watched with my grandfather when I was a kid—Brigadoon.

A Utopian place in the Scottish highlands that peered out of the mists every couple of centuries.

As I stared around this discomforting clearing, I couldn’t help but liken Nevaehai to Brigadoon.

Without the Scottish accents and everyone being called Angus.

“No need to fear but you trap us with fog?” Knight retorted, and I saw him pushing at the fog which wasn’t a gaseous mist but solid, substantially weighted.

I pressed my hand to the fog too, and as I did, it acted like memory foam. Bowing to the pressure, but slipping around me with a cosseting hug.

My lips tightened at the sight, before I rasped, “It makes no sense. The Mother isn’t Catholic.”

“Neither am I,” Grace, or Kali Sara depending on your preference, murmured. “I’m a spirit, one of many the Mother graced this plane with.

“For what purpose?”

“To nourish the totems.”

Brow puckering, I murmured, “You’re tied to the totem?”

She hummed. “Indeed I am.” Her smile turned amused. “I am the Mother’s voice, as well as Her eyes and ears.”

I’d never had a covenant because I wasn’t a wolf, but I knew from what Grace and Knight had told me that, after their first shift, when they’d had their covenant, they’d spoken with the Mother.

Directly.

Unless…

“At the covenant, do you speak with the pack?”

She bowed her head, her gracefulness something I wasn’t accustomed to seeing in my mate. As much as I loved Grace, she was a little like a bull in a china shop sometimes.

“That isn’t possible,” Knight muttered.

“I can assure you,” she said gently, “it is. I am but one of thousands who commune with you.”

“Thousands?” I choked out.

“I am the totem. The totem is me.”

“Meaning that each one has its own…” I winced. “Saint?”

“For lack of a better word, yes.”

“What the hell’s happening, Cade?” Knight rasped, and I heard his fear. While I didn’t share the sentiment, I understood why he’d be scared.

Knight was a wolf.

I wasn’t.

He might be fearless in the face of a challenge from an alpha, might be capable of killing with his bare hands and brute strength on his side, but the totem, the Mother, these were all revered by the pack, by his people and his culture.

I was different.

I was taught to question things in an effort to learn more. My father taught me to respect and love the Mother, but to be aware that she was a deity. A Goddess. A divine creature. One who acted in ways we could never predict, and that made her dangerous.

To be loved, but like a wild animal stuck in a bear trap—feral. As a result, she had to be treated with caution, not outright devotion.

For all we’d been raised practically under the same roof, our parents were different, his fathers forged from this world, mine were adopted into it. That had me tempering my agitation, and I reached out, cupped him by the back of the neck and squeezed gently. “We’re learning how the world works,” I told him softly, trying to calm him, because even though he’d pissed me off earlier, there was no need for that now.

We were all in the same boat, and if we didn’t want to capsize, then we had to work together to keep ourselves afloat.

“Why are you telling us this?” I gestured with my other hand. “And why have you overtaken Grace?”

“Because if I am the Mother’s senses, Her link to this world, then Grace is Her hands.”

My nostrils flared at that. “What are you talking about?”

That Mona Lisa smile dimmed. “Once upon a time, I could have stood here on my own two feet. I could have stared at you from my own eyes, reached out and shook the hands of the young folk who promised change. But that is no longer possible. Through time and the brute strength of the Father, the Mother’s power has waned.” Grace bit her lip. “Once upon a time, the totem was as stalwart, as impervious as a mountain. That is no longer the case.”

There was no denying the truth of her words.

Hadn’t my death been the direct result of the totem splintering? Almost to the middle?

“Only Grace can do what needs to be done.”

“What is that?”

“Repair the damage. Go with the Mother,” she whispered, and until Grace sagged, falling to her knees in the springy grass that was a little like walking on a mattress and which let off a soft, delicate perfume with every step I took on it, I didn’t realize that was Kali Sara’s version of a farewell.